Category: ramble

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Miminality2 Comments

The plan to write a post for each day in July has foiled itself long ago. There isn’t much to write of except a few books read, little daily heartbreaks and a series of careless, clumsy accidents. Like a battered nose duly earned from running down college corridors without stopping to look. Being mildly electrocuted because you tried to pull a stubborn plug out of its socket without turning off the switch first, and then lying down curled on the floor shuddering shuddering shuddering and wondering when this will stop (if this will stop) and whether human beings can be earthed and if you haven’t discovered yet another not-so-disagreeable way to die. Sleeping pills were one. Not that I have any intention to die yet. But one plans, like one plans everything, for the sake of comfort and reassurance. One imagines life will be like this, although life nearly always turns out otherwise, but one must have means to fill the void in imagination.

Okay, don’t read the emo tripe. It’s just that I had to mention the electric shock because it happened right now.

~

Last night, I wrote this for D on my phone before I went to sleep:

I love you much, it matters not;
You’ve cast your die in with the lot
Of magic, men and mean machines.
You’ve torn your heart from verdant greens
And patched it up with bones and rags,
Cats in hats and tricks in bags;
You’ve lost it, tossed it like a toy,
And grieved it like a foolish boy.

I think he likes it a little or maybe he doesn’t. I miss D very much although I’ll never get the knack of saying things entirely warm or cheerful. I wonder if he minds that I put this up on the blog?

~

I’ve finished setting up the new sound system in my room and in a while (I’m hoping) the new printer will get crackling and when I go to bed tonight I’ll be technologically fulfilled and happy.

16

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All morning there were alternating clouds and sunbursts and a little whimsical rain, and curled up in my bed with the light not lit I could sometimes see the page of the book in my hands and sometimes not. When it was too dark to decipher the words anymore I would roll over and lie on my back and think about the lines I’d just read and how fast my eyesight was going and ohmygodarghhowmuchthishurts and then the room would fill with sunshine again and I’d go back to reading some more of Flowers for Algernon which was finished late in the afternoon, just before the tubelight had to be decisively turned on and then I went to sleep. Flowers for Algernon is the first book borrowed from the DL with my new library card, which was issued yesterday. It makes me feel a little more grounded to this place though there is still time to fly away (and I’ll stare and stare at the days and watch them pass, tick-ticking away, I’ll stare hard and steady and faithful until it’s too late and then I’ll shake my head, look away and forget). The novel is creepy, well thought-out and absorbing, just the way I like all stories to be. (The beginning, though, reminded me that I never finished reading A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man which I began long ago: a small, rather familiar pang of guilt.)

Physical pain amuses me by the sheer tangibility of it unlike emotional pain. You can contain it, exclude it and forget all about it. These days are like 2004-05 all over again except that in 2004-05 I used to think the future would be different. But the “different” seems to have been just an interlude and now the waters are closing in again and I’m trying to remind myself that in 2004-05 I was not unhappy. Quite a few negatives but I was strong and independent and unafraid to love and infinitely curious about everything. I would love to have that curiosity back. Let’s see, let’s see.

This is a post title.

Miminality4 Comments

Yesterday Baba made narkol diye ilish machh (Borishaali, apparently) for dinner. I love when Baba cooks and doesn’t forget that I cannot eat jhaal, so the red chilli powder (or ground pepper, or slivers of chopped green chilli and variant thereof) begs to go easy on, despite the compromise of culinary integrity incurred therefore (a great sin, as far as my father is concerned).

It made me smile the way Baba prowled happily around the dining table radiating a triumphant halo while we ate and occasionally nudging Ma: ‘Borishaali, hNu hNu baba, Borishaali, bujhechho?’ The recipe was doubtlessly off a book or magazine, but it reminded me of a long time ago when my parents just couldn’t come to an agreement about whether the day-to-day food at home should be cooked the epaar Bangla way or the opaar Bangla way. I grew up around steadily lengthening lists of “weird things your Baba’s people eat” and “weird things your Ma’s people eat”, most of the items on which I don’t even recall because what I was demanding all that time was pizza. I half-suspect there’s a secret mutual list of “weird things the children eat”, topped off with the incomprehensible mantra that either cheese or chocolate makes everything better.

Hmm. Baba is very devious, in subtle ways I always failed to observe when I was younger. (He’s also energetic and explosive, and energetic and explosive people turn me into a completely puzzled neurovore). I think Baba doesn’t want me to go away to Dilli, though verbally he is being very encouraging, nearly runs off to buy flight tickets. I think I will let him cook a few more nonchalant dinners, Borishaali or otherwise, as long as he doesn’t find out that I’ve declined already.

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It amuses me to  think in retrospect that the JNU English entrance was the first national-level competitive exam I have ever taken. (This hadn’t occured to me before/while I wrote the exam, or I’d have invariably got cold feet and refused to appear, not turned in the answer script or done something equally ludicrous.) Application procedures confuse and frighten me. For undergraduate the only college I had wanted to go to was in my home city (a fact I wasn’t entirely glad about), so I’d taken only that entrance. The BA entrance for JUDE is also theoretically a national-level competitive exam but in reality few people outside the state actually take it, so maybe I had it easier. Every time I had changed schools I applied to only one school at a time, less for any real security or excess of confidence than the fact that I simply did not feel the rush. The complacence nurtures itself inside my head and grows. I have to eventually push myself out of this habit of applying to only one course at only one institution, because the next time I’m sure I won’t get through.

Hmm. I’m never any good at pushing myself out of anything.

14th was nice. Good books, class singing, many chocolates, model Porsche (yay!), sketch that I just won’t say anything about, a beautiful evening sky over the city and most of the people I’d have liked to spend time with. It’s interesting how birthdays, anniversaries and such dates aren’t significant in themselves but for what you do with the excuse. I will think about this later and see if I can reach up to any (seemingly) profound conclusion. Not now. Tomorrow I go to the sea.